The Crossroads Project: Helping keep pets out of shelters

Pet owner outreach is an important component of the DCAP plan. Outreach programs help pet owners with limited financial means better care for their pets, thereby helping keep pets in their homes and out of area shelters and rescues.

The Crossroads Project is a partnership with Crossroads Community Center located at the Stewpot in downtown Dallas. Crossroads provides low-income families with food, clothing, career counseling, and other amenities — including a limited amount of pet food, when available. That’s where DCAP is helping. After an initial meeting with the directors at Crossroads in May, we got right to work. We reached out to our partners at The Green Pet in Oak Cliff and they were able to secure a donation of 300 pounds of dog food from a supplier for the project. DFW Rescue Me volunteers provided the transportation to get it to Crossroads.

But the initial donation was a one-time offer and is no longer available – and we’ve not been able to secure any cat food donations at all. So last month Dallas Animal Shelter Commission Chair and DCAP task force member Mary Spencer has twice now purchased and donated $250 worth of dog and cat food, which The Green Pet supplied to us at cost. Then just last week, Dee’s Doggie Den partnered with FreeHand and DFW Rescue Me to provide nearly 800 hundred of pounds of dry and canned food for the Project.

So we have enough food to get the families by for a few more weeks, but we’re going to need your help to continue to provide pet food for low-income pet owners. We’re still hopeful we may one day find a wholesaler or other source that can donate what we need on a regular basis, but until then we need funding to purchase the food we need. Three hundred pounds of dog food only lasts about two weeks at Crossroads, despite being rationed at the rate of 1 one-gallon bag of pet food for each. Sadly, we know that many of these families have multiple dogs and need more food than that 1 one-gallon bag each week. But until we enough donations to support the project, they won’t get it. And Crossroads has 40 satellite distribution centers located throughout some of Dallas’ poorest neighborhoods, and we’d like to eventually have enough food to supply those locations as well.